Alice in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass / The Hunting... by Lewis Carroll

On 24th August 1866, Carroll wrote to Macmillan that he was contemplating another ‘Alice’ book: Originally, the story contained a chapter called ‘ A wasp in a Wig‘, but Carroll decided to drop it before publication. Carroll considered having several pages of the book actually printed in reverse, so the reader would have to hold them up to a looking-glass to read, but in the end this proved to be too expensive and troublesome, and only the first stanza of ‘Jabberwocky’ was reversed. Some people think that this has something to do with his left-handedness, and the asymmetry of his body. He liked to write letters in mirror-writing, drew pictures which changed into different ones when held upside down, and he also liked to play his musical boxes backwards. The ‘wrong-way-round idea’ dominates the book, because this kind of game was a favourite of Carroll’s. However, Carroll met Alice Raikes in August 1868, when the story was already well advanced, so this story is doubtful ( Carroll x). He tied the chess stories and the other individual ideas together into a single story with the use of two main themes: chess and mirror images.Ĭarroll’s distant cousin Alice Raikes suggested that she gave him the idea for the Looking-Glass theme, when he asked her to stand in front of a mirror, holding an orange, and tell him in which hand she was holding it. Many of these stories were also used for his second ‘Alice’ story. He made up stories to illustrate the moves of the pieces and the rules of the game. In the six years since he wrote Alice in Wonderland, Carroll had been teaching Alice and her sisters the game of chess.

“ Looking-Glass made up almost wholly of bits and scraps, single ideas that came of themselves.” In the article ‘ Alice on the Stage‘ he remarked: While writing the ‘Looking-Glass’ story, Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) used a lot of material that he had come up with earlier. Publishing date: December 1871 (but dated 1872).Author: Lewis Carroll (pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson).Full title: Through the Looking-Glass and what Alice found there.

Alice in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass / The Hunting... by Lewis Carroll